When Sustainability met Art. A story from the owners of Baas-Sustainables.

Baas sustainables was founded by Shourya KC and Phobe Barahi in August, 2020. Cousins by relation, we always shared the love for crafting, painting and recycling. During the initial phase of lockdown of 2020, we explored the idea of painting over bamboo which was abundant in our surroundings.  

To reuse the bamboo which were in our neighbourhood, we painted on them thinking it would be a nice decor piece. In the beginning, we distributed a few recycled painted flower vases to our family as a gift. As it had turned into our hobby to create something useful out of the wasted bamboo, we decided to take some action against the bamboo waste.

In Nepal, bamboos are extensively used as scaffoldings while building houses. Those bamboos are oftentimes left in the streets or around the houses to decay after the construction completes. Majority of the bamboo do not get recycled and hence turn into waste. This was the first problem that we identified. Secondly, the mass production of plastic decor items which are easily available in the market is the other issue that we address. Normally these items are imported from China, and it is said that the items produced in China have a larger carbon footprint than being produced locally. Therefore, we decided to penetrate the blooming eco-friendly Nepali market with our bamboo products which could replace plastic items.

With the vision of promoting sustainable living, we established Baas Sustainables during the initial phase of lockdown. Talking about the name, we collectively decided on using “baas” as the first name since it’s the Nepali word for bamboo. It was an approach to social media marketing. Using a simple Nepali name would quickly grab the attention of the customers while being easy to search on social media platforms. We still wanted an adjoining name that would complement our vision along with being catchy. We came up with the word “sustainables” because the word itself brought our vision clearly and it somehow complemented with “baas”. This is how we finalised our name.

When we opened our social media accounts, we just wanted to share our ideas thinking it would create a certain awareness about sustainability. Since neither of us came from a business background, we were naive at first. We had very minimal knowledge on the conducts of business and had not expected to get orders. Gradually, we started gaining support from our friends and family and our customers too. This motivated us to expand our product line and explore more opportunities.

Now we are almost near the end of our first year and we couldn’t be more happier for the love and support that we have been receiving.